Methods	Parallel group RCT
Participants	174 patients randomised. Mixed CHD patients, 81% MI, 63% with a history of angina, 17% post-CABG. Mean age 53.8 years, 88% men, 95% white
Interventions	INTERVENTION: Oral persuasive communication and education intervention to improve patient adherence to exercise regimens. Intervention developed from interviews with previous patients and their spouses to elicit the most common beliefs of benefits and drawbacks to the exercise programme. Patients in the intervention group received an oral persuasive communication on the telephone in scripted counselling format to: convince them of the benefits of regular exercise, warn them of likely drawbacks so that expectations would be realistic, acquaint them with methods used by other patients to cope with drawbacks, and elicit an oral commitment to attend at least two classes per week for the first 6 weeks. In addition, patients received a mailed written persuasive communication to reinforce these points. Spouses also received telephone counselling to encourage the patient to attend and discuss methods that other patients spouses found useful. A written communication to reinforce these points was also sent to the spouse to increase the spouse’s support. Patients also received a pamphlet with information on benefits and drawbacks of exercise. All communication was tailored to individual patients based on data collected by questionnaire at baseline COMPARISON: Comparison group patients and spouses received the same pamphlet with information on the benefits and drawbacks of exercise, as the intervention group. This was done so all patients would have the same inducement to enter the programme. It was thought unlikely that this single intervention would produce lasting behavioural change
Outcomes	Attendance at exercise sessions over three months.
Notes	Subgroup analysis revealed that among the intervention group, attendance was greater among better educated patients. Spouse participation, age, gender and occupation were not associated with attendance, although the numbers in these subgroups are likely to be too small to draw firm conclusions
Risk of bias
Item	Authors’ judgement	Description
Adequate sequence generation?	Unclear	Not reported
Allocation concealment?	Unclear	Not reported
Free of other bias?	Unclear	CR nurse not aware of group assigned to; however, no procedure in place to stop patients telling nurse which letter received
Blind outcome assessment? All outcomes	Unclear	Not reported